10X CDRW Shootout: Sony Spressa Vs. HP 9310i - PAGE 1

CD-RW drives or CD burners as they are most often called is quickly becoming a data transport standard thanks to the help of new technologies that allow a CD to be written to in lighting speed. CD-RW drives can not only write data one time to a CD, but many times ?with the use of a CD-RW disk.

Manufactures are in a race to prove their CD-RW drive is the fastest and most stable on the market by incorporating a ton of CD burning features that help to insure the correct copy of data and audio onto a standard CD-R or CD-RW disk without errors and at maximum speed.

This head to head shootout is going to cover two of the top 10X CD-RW drives on the market today and show you what technologies work ?and which ones don?t! The Sony Spressa Professional, and the HP CD-Writer Plus 9310i, both of which can write data at 10X speeds -are going under the microscope, and we are going to drag out the good, bad, and ugly.

CD writing can place a lot of stress on a computer. Reason being ?as data writes speeds increase, the CPU and drive system in a computer must be able to keep up, or errors can occur during a CD-write ?sometimes rendering the CD-R useless. That?s one of the most important things to look for in any CD-RW drive ? how reliable it can burn CD?s at those blazing fast speeds. I don?t want to dig too deep into CD-RW technology, as most are already familiar with what actually happens when a CD-R or CD-RW is written to. But as this head to head match up commences, there are going to be some new terms introduced to you, therefore I will explain a little bit about each one as we go along. And as you will see ?each drives comes with it?s own set of proprietary requirements to attain a fast and reliable burn.

Kind of pathetic if you ask me. The Plextor 12x was the first, and fastest drive out and these lame 10x are sporting reviews as the fastest drive. The Plextor is the best burner on the home market. Sounds like someone was paid to do this review to shadow the fact they are out dated, and lack the technology the TDX and Plextor have implemented. Just my two cents worth.

Yes, Sony has long produced drives for HP. I will never buy another HP drive again, simply because the HP firmware updates were always behind MONTHS after Sony released theirs. I needed those updates to correct problems I was experiencing, drooling over Sony's firmware which listed the fixes for what I was experiencing plus more. I sold my ugly grey HP and bought a retail Ricoh.

I think hardware reviews should always indicate when an item is really just a rebadged product. Ever since my own HP/Sony experience, I stay away from rebadged hardware with extreme prejudice.

If the drives are completely identical, why bother to sell them as different at all?

If there is no point in comparing the products, then there is no point in marketing the two as separate products. I think it important that the author found differences in performance, because that ultimately means that the firmware revisions did make a difference. The only question, is whether the drives will stay like that (ie their relative firmware dates).

Yes -we realize they are the same drive. Well almost identical! The logic boards on both drives have the same numbers written in the same place. Those numbers are MA-S11 1-677-954-31 Made in Japan. All the jumpers and audio connectors are also in the same places.

The faceplates are obviously different -as you can see from the pictures submitted, so the HP drive is clearly a remarked Sony. But the real issue here, as stated in the review -was software offered with each drives and how it can help improve reliablity and speed, plus the price of each CD-RW drive package.Hope that clears up any questions - Rich

I think this comparsion is only testing the firmware, and the software bundles.... I went to read this article because I was wondering who in the world would compare 2 exact same drive.. Did the author know that they are the same drive?

The HP drives may be made by Sony, but it is probable that the two drives are different hardware/firmware. Even between video cards using the same reference design and same chipset you have performance variations, why not between two CD-RW drives with possibly different hardware configurations?